One of the major goals identified in Healthy People 2000 (USDHHS 1991) is to reduce the rate of cigarette smoking from the current 29% to no more than 15% of adults by the year 2000. The long-term objective of the proposed project is to develop effective nurse-delivered interventions that help clients quit smoking. This project investigates the occurrence of resistive responses (RRs), which are defined as both intentional coping strategies and unintentional cognitions that the subject perceives as helpful in resisting the urge to smoke. The specific aims of the project are: (1) to develop a new system for categorizing RRs that demonstrates the differential use and effectiveness of RRs in helping individuals overcome the urge to smoke; (2) to adapt the new system so that it can be used by individuals who are attempting to quit smoking to classify their own RRs; (3) to use the adapted classification system in an experience sampling paradigm for the real-time collection of data to address four major research questions. These research questions concern the frequency of occurrence of different types of RRs, the concomitants of RRs, the effect of a lapse on RRs, and the relationship of RR use to 3-month abstinence rates. The project includes three studies. In Study 1, experience sampling methods will be used to collect qualitative and quantitative data on the RRs of 35 subjects over 2-day periods during their first 10 days of smoking cessation. A classification system based on existing systems and on an interpretive qualitative analysis of the data will be developed. In Study 2, a sample of 60 subjects will be employed to assess whether subjects who are quitting smoking can use the new system to classify their own RRs. In Study 3, the computer-assisted classification system developed in Studies 1 and 2 will be used in a longitudinal design to collect data from 76 subjects on the frequency, types, and concomitants of RRs during the first 10 days of smoking cessation. In addition, an exploratory study of the RRs used at one month and three months after cessation will be carried out with the subsample of subjects who remain abstinent.